“I haven’t decided yet,” he said, adjusting the mike on the headset.
“What’s on your mind?” she asked, taking his hand. He twisted his hand around to lace their fingers together, his grip tight enough to blanch the blood out of his fingertips. Cade wasn’t fazed by the pain she must have felt at the force of his grasp.
“What if they’re not there anymore?” Brandt asked. “What if something happened and they had to bail?”
“Then they’d have left a note telling us where they went,” Cade replied.
“What if they didn’t have time to leave a note?”
“Then we’ll look for them,” Cade said. “We’ll tear the entire country apart to find them if we need to.”
“I’m glad you’re more confident than I am right now,” Brandt said. “Things like this never work out for me.”
“It worked out for you when you came looking for me,” Cade pointed out, and at that, he smiled. She leaned over and rested her head against his bicep, then sat up straight again. “It’s going to be fine, Brandt. I promise.”
“I hope so.”
“We’re touching down in two minutes,” the pilot announced over the headsets.
“This is it, Brandt,” Cade said with a huge grin. “You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
The touchdown was bumpy, maybe because it had been so long since Brandt had been in a helicopter—well, while conscious, that was. He barely waited for the soldier in the back of the helicopter to open the doors before he threw his headset off and dropped to the pavement. He drew the pistol holstered on his hip, partially out of reflex but mostly because he knew the sound of a helicopter would attract a lot of unwanted attention to their location. The rotors slowed and the motor started to wind down. Cade joined him, lifting her rifle, surveying the scene around them.
“See anything?” Cade asked.
Brandt examined every nook and cranny his eyes would allow him to see into and shook his head. “Not a thing,” he reported. He looked back to the pilot and the soldier that had come with them. “You guys okay to stay here?”
“We’ll be fine,” the soldier assured him.
“Lead the way, would you?” Brandt said to Cade. “I don’t know where I’m going.”
The house was a modest two-story affair, a suburban-style family home before the Michaluk Virus tore up the southeast that was showing signs of wear and tear, probably beyond its years. There were no vehicles in front of the house, but he could make out tire tracks that had torn up a bit of grass leading toward the back of the house. The windows on the first floor were barricaded, and everything looked still and undisturbed.
“Back door,” Cade said. She started ahead of him, cutting across the yard, following the tire tracks in the grass. Brandt stuck close to her, noting the odd appearance of an ambulance parked in the backyard—where the hell had that come from?—and followed her up the back deck stairs to the door. She rapped on it, several sharp knocks that Brandt was sure carried across the entire yard, then the sound of locks being unfastened reached their ears. The door flew open, and Isaac Wright stood in the doorframe, a look of pure joy on his face.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive!” he exclaimed, wrapping his arms around first Cade and then Brandt in bone-crushing embraces.
“You can’t possibly have expected anything else,” Cade commented, patting him on the arm. She stepped back, closer to Brandt, like she was seeking refuge from the man’s extremely enthusiastic hugs.
“I shouldn’t have,” Isaac acknowledged. He looked Brandt up and down and opened his mouth to say something, but the thin wail of a baby’s cry interrupted him. Brandt’s head snapped up, zeroing in on the sound, and he pushed past Isaac to enter the house.
The noise was coming from somewhere upstairs. Brandt charged up the stairs, taking them two at a time, barely noticing that Cade was right behind him. He stopped at the head of the stairs, listening, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound, and picked the door near the end of the hall. He rushed to it, pushing the door open, and stopped short inside the door. Derek Rivers stood by the window, an infant nestled against his shoulder, rubbing her back, gently patting to soothe her.
“Oh my God,” Brandt said. He stared with wide eyes at the tiny baby against the doctor’s shoulder.
Derek turned at the sound of his voice, and a big grin spread across his face. “You’re back.”
“Yeah. I’m back.” Brandt stepped forward to meet his daughter for the first time.
II.
Ethan stood in the front yard of a ramshackle house he’d never been to before that day, listening to the rotors of the helicopter that had dropped him off there as they slowly wound up. He stared down at a two by six pile of dirt that he’d both dug up and replaced. The temperature was warmer than he had expected, the air humid and heavy, and his skin was already soaked with sweat, which had prompted him to discard his jacket not long into his project. He pushed his hair back from his forehead and wished for the fifth time since he’d gotten there that he’d taken the time to shave off his facial hair; the heat and sweat were making his face itch.
Kimberly stood beside him, leaning against her shovel, the blade buried in the dirt. She looked as uncomfortable in this heat as he felt. The moment she’d set foot off the helicopter, she’d started pulling her blonde hair into a high ponytail to get it off her neck. Her shirt was damp with sweat, and she wore a pair of large-framed sunglasses that made her look a bit bug-like.
Sadie knelt nearby, studying the surrounding landscape like it was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen. Her expression was blank, like it had been since she’d lost her twin brother, and her jaw was clenched. Ethan still had no idea why she’d asked to come with him and Kimberly on his self-imposed mission. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to stay in Eden with people she didn’t know. With Cade and Brandt headed back to Hollywood, South Carolina, to meet up with Derek, Isaac, and their newborn child, there hadn’t been anyone else she knew in Eden to keep her there.
“You okay?” Kimberly asked, raising her voice to be heard over the sound of the helicopter crew’s pre-flight check off.
Ethan set his shovel on the ground, motioning with his head toward the dilapidated house they stood near. “Yeah, I’m okay,” he said. “I’m going in there for a few minutes.” He didn’t wait for Kimberly’s acknowledgment; he started walking forward, his shoes crunching on the mostly dead grass that covered the house’s front lawn.
The house would have been dilapidated even before it had been abandoned at the onset of the outbreak. The humidity and the weather hadn’t helped. The front porch, a hand-built wooden affair that looked at least twenty years old, sagged in the middle, like the entire thing would fall in with a wrong step. The steps weren’t in much better condition, and the wooden railing had broken away and lay on the ground alongside the steps.
“My family didn’t have very much money,” he remembered her saying. “Mama was lucky to get my dad to pay his child support on time.”
He ascended the steps carefully and went to the front door. It hung open, dangling by a single hinge, the glass that was once set in it broken and littering the porch. His tennis shoes crunched on the glass as he stepped inside.
The interior was dark, so he took out his flashlight, but he didn’t bother pulling a weapon. If there were any infected in here, they wouldn’t pose a threat to him. He shone the flashlight beam around the entryway, and the first thing he saw was a body laying on the bottom few steps of the staircase leading to the second level. It was face down, one arm stretched up the stairs. The body was desiccated, and it looked like it had once been a woman.
“I shot her at the bottom of the stairs. I didn’t have a choice. She just wouldn’t stop. And she’d already killed Maddie…”
Ethan paused there for a long moment, bowing his head respectfully, then stepped past the stairs to the kitchen.
“Jason died in the kitchen. He was trying to hold the back
door, trying to keep them from getting in. He couldn’t do it by himself. He wasn’t strong enough.”
The vague remains of what might have once been a man were smeared across the cracked, torn vinyl tiles that covered the kitchen. There were random bits littering the floor, and a long-dried, dark brown streak ran from near the back door to the floor beside the four-seater dining table tucked into a corner of the kitchen. Once again, Ethan paused there, then stepped away and turned back the way he’d come.
The stairs looked daunting. The weather had taken its toll on the steps, warping the wood and bending it up at the corners. He stepped around the body at the foot of the stairs and ascended to the second floor, searching for the last bit of the puzzle that was supposed to flesh out the story.
“I ran upstairs and got my dad’s shotgun, and I fought my way out of the house and into the woods behind the house…”
Ethan found the bedroom near the end of the hall, just before the master bedroom. It was the room of a rebellious young adult, almost stereotypically so, with band posters papering the walls. The bed was unmade, clothes littered the floor, and the desk held a large, bulky desktop computer that looked like it’d seen better days, covered with stickers advertising bands and tattoo parlors and even a couple of nightclubs. He stepped away from the desk and turned his head, looking toward the closet.
A small form lay slumped inside the closet, lying on its back. Ethan stepped forward and shone the flashlight into the closet, crouching to examine the body inside.
“She killed them both. And she was coming after me.”
Ethan had never been able to get a real read on her story. It’d always changed, shifting from one version to the next. When he’d been a police officer, a story like that would have rung alarm bells in his head. He supposed that it had done that very thing on a subconscious level. Otherwise, why would he be there, falling into his investigative habits?
There were footsteps on the floor in the hall, hesitant ones, and he knew it was Kimberly. She stepped into the room behind him and stopped several feet away. He could feel her eyes on him. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“She lied,” Ethan said. He rested his elbows against his thighs.
“Who?”
“She lied about what happened here.” He looked up at Kimberly, a sick surge in his gut. “Her mother didn’t kill her sister. And her sister doesn’t appear to have been infected.”
“What are you getting at?” Kimberly asked.
Ethan stood and slipped past her, heading back toward the stairs. Fortunately, Kimberly didn’t pursue the line of questioning, didn’t speak again until they were back out in the front yard. “What now?”
“Now you and Sadie get on that helicopter and go back to Eden,” Ethan said.
“I think you’re missing part of the equation there,” Kimberly said. “There are three of us.”
“I’m not going back with you.”
“What?” Kimberly cried, and Ethan saw the stunned expression in her eyes, like he’d slapped her. “You can’t… I mean… why?”
“I don’t belong there, Kim,” Ethan said. He sat down on one of the rickety porch steps. “I’m infected. I’m a walking biohazard. I might not be infectious—that we know of—but I’ll always pose a threat to the part of the world that’s uninfected. I can’t expose people to the risk that I might somehow one day start another outbreak. It’s better if I’m here, on this side of the wall. Here, I can do what I can to eradicate the infected and locate survivors for evacuation.” He motioned to the large backpack that he’d left on the ground near the grave he’d dug earlier. “The military even gave me a solar-powered radio to contact them with whenever I find people.”
“That’s something you can’t do by yourself,” Kimberly said. “I’m staying with you.”
“Kim, please,” he protested, but she leaned down and pressed her lips to his, silencing any opposition he might have had. He cupped her face in his hands and caressed her cheeks with his thumbs as she moved her mouth against his.
“Shut up,” she said when she pulled away from him. “Don’t argue. I’m staying. I’m not going back. There’s nothing for me there. Everything I want is here.” She pressed a hand against his chest, right over his heart.
Ethan heaved a sigh. “Fine,” he muttered. “I’m not going to talk you out of it anyway, am I?”
“Damn right,” Kimberly agreed.
Someone behind her cleared their throat, and Ethan looked past her to see Sadie standing nearby, looking determined. “I had every intention of sneaking out of here the minute your backs were turned and going off on my own,” she said. “Because, like you guys, I don’t have anything left for me in Eden. But if you’re going to be staying…do you mind if I stick around with you?”
Ethan couldn’t help it. He laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he commented. “Of all the people I know, I bring the two with me that have absolutely nothing left for them in civilization. It’s like my subconscious was trying to sabotage my attempts to run off by myself.”
“I take it that’s a yes then?” Sadie asked.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s a yes,” Ethan said with another laugh. He stood and crossed the yard, picking up the heavy backpack that was loaded full of his immediate essentials, and started toward the helicopter. “Come on, let’s let the helicopter crew know that they’re not going to have any passengers for the trip back to Eden.”
“And then?” Kimberly asked as she and Sadie scrambled to keep up with him.
Ethan glanced at her and smiled widely. “I think I promised you that I’d try to save the world.”
Acknowledgments
Writing a novel is hard, hard work. Writing a series is even more so. Finishing this series has been so difficult for me. I started writing the first book in 2009, back when I was still working in retail. Since then, when I first envisioned this as a single volume, it’s ballooned into five books and several novellas, all exploring this weird little infected world I created all those years ago. And in my personal life, things have changed as equally drastically: I left retail to start a job in EMS, I started writing an entirely new series, and I experienced the most traumatic event of my life thus far with the loss of my father, the last of which embedded itself into the narrative of this book in ways I never expected.
I’m not going to lie: it’s heartbreaking leaving this world. I’ve spent so much time with these characters that I don’t want to give them up. At the same time, however, I can’t help but admit some measure of relief. I’ve spent so much time immersed in this world that I’m ready to explore some other worlds and new characters. That said, it’s not totally the end. There’s still a book of novellas to be released in the form of an expanded edition of The Becoming: Origins. So I hope you’re looking forward to reading those stories.
I suppose this is also the point where I take a few moments to offer up some thank yous. There are a lot of people to thank, so if I leave anyone out, I apologize, but know that it’s most certainly not intentional!
First, I’d like to take a few moments to thank my parents. They’ve supported me all throughout the writing of this series, and even though my dad is no longer here, I know that he’d be proud of me for what I’ve accomplished. I also have to thank my older sister Amanda and my younger sister Stephanie for all their support and encouragement.
Many, many thanks to Michael and the crew at Permuted Press for giving me the opportunity to continue this series beyond the third book.
A big thank you to Felicia A. Sullivan for the hard work she put in editing this book to make it readable.
I also would like to thank all the folks that have given me encouragement and have been beta readers for me over the course of this series. I don’t dare list them all by name, because I’m terrified I’ll forget someone, but you all know who you are.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank Kevin Michaluk, the Chief Media Officer of Mobile Nations. If it weren’t for his innocent littl
e question, I’d never have gotten this far writing this series (and he wouldn’t have a fictitious zombie virus named after him)!
Of course, I can’t not thank Hannah Gordon, my agent, for taking the time to negotiate the deal that made these last couple of books possible.
And lastly, but most certainly not least: READERS! Thank you for buying these books, reading them, reviewing them, spreading the word about them, and offering up your opinions and encouragements. An author is nothing without readers to read the books, and I couldn’t ask for a better group of readers!
About the Author
Jessica Meigs is the author of The Becoming, a post-apocalyptic thriller series that follows a group of people trying to survive a massive viral outbreak in the southeastern United States. After gaining notoriety for having written the series on a variety of BlackBerry smartphones, she self-published two novellas that now make up the first book in the series. In April 2011, she accepted a deal with Permuted Press to publish The Becoming as a series of novels. The first of the series, entitled The Becoming, was released in November 2011 and was named one of Barnes & Noble’s Best Zombie Fiction Releases of the Decade by reviewer Paul Goat Allen. Five more novels and an assortment of novellas followed.
In 2014, Jessica signed a deal with Permuted Press/Post Hill Press to publish a series of urban fantasy/horror novels entitled The Unnaturals. The first book in the series, The Unnaturals, is expected in 2016.
Jessica lives in semi-obscurity in Demopolis, Alabama. When she’s not writing, she works full time as an EMT. She can be found on Twitter @JessicaMeigs, on Facebook at facebook.com/JessicaMeigs, and on Goodreads at goodreads.com/JessicaMeigs. You can also visit her website at www.jessicameigs.com.
Jessica is represented by Hannah Brown Gordon of Foundry Literary + Media. For any rights inquiries, please contact Hannah at [email protected].
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